Flat Tire

Yesterday I pulled out of the church parking lot after Oliver's basketball practice a little after 7pm. I noticed that the tire pressure warning light was on, but we that particular warning light frequently goes off when the weather changes. Sometimes we need to add air to one or more of the tires. Sears had told me last year that they thought there was a problem with the sensor. After I pulled out of the parking lot, I heard a strange sound and knew something didn't feel right. I pulled over into a side street, looked around the van, and saw I had a flat tire (passenger side front tire). I called Paul, and it took him about 30 minutes to get to us as he was still on his way home from work. He came straight to us instead. We had never had a flat tire with the van before. We've had the van for 5 years (plus 4 months). Paul discovered it took a lot of time and effort just to get the spare tire out from under the van and the jack from the trunk. Altogether it took over an hour for him to change the tire. One of the people in the housing development where I had parked called the police at one point to find out what we were doing. Two hours after we left the church we got home. The church is 12 minutes from our house. The kids were all tucked into bed at 9:10pm, which was five minutes after we pulled into the garage.

In the fall I had purchased two tires. Sadly, one of those tires was the one that had a hole in it. I bought the tires at Sears before I knew that the store would be closing a few months later. If the store was still open, I could take it in and get a new tire at no charge because it was under warranty, but the nearest Sears Auto Center is now too far away for me to drive on a donut. I took the tire to a shop in our town today to see if they could patch it, but it turns out it was damaged on the inside because I had driven a little bit on the flat tire. The soonest they could get me a tire that would fit our van would be Monday, and I need to drive to Bloomsburg at 6:30AM on Monday (and that's too far to drive with a donut). I called Walmart, and they had a tire in stock. I plan on buying my tires at Walmart in the future as like Sears they give you free tire rotations if you buy your tires there. At some point in the next year or so I'll need to replace the other two tires. The soonest appointment they had was for Sunday. Paul is going to take it in for me. Paul was in Baltimore for 5 days last week, and he'll be in Las Vegas from Monday through Saturday next week. I am grateful if I had a flat tire that it happened this week while he was here, as I would have had no idea how to change it myself.

Shortly before 4pm I got an email from the HR department saying that my contract is ready for me to sign. Yahoo! I will meet with my student teachers at 7:30 and then go over to HR and sign my contract. I talked to the department chair today. She said that if any of the three professors who say they are going to retire do actually retire, she will ask for a full year FT adjunct (one for each professor who retires). Hopefully if they are going to retire they'll let the university know in a timely manner. If they want to teach this summer and retire after that, it will delay their announcement. But the good news is that my department chair thinks that even if none of them retire, I will be able to be FT next fall. It just would mean I'd still be offered a contract for only one semester at a time. The schedule could change if another professor asks for these classes as overload. I know about that from experience as my schedule changed for this spring semester for that reason. At the moment she's thinking (if none of them retire),that I could teach two sections of the math class I'm going to teach this semester (she's thinking I'd teach from 8:00-10:45am on Tuesdays/Thursdays) plus have 10 student teachers. This semester I have one section of the class and 15 student teachers. It's heavenly to think of teaching the *same* class next semester considering this semester I'm not teaching any of the three different courses I taught last semester. Normally they offer one online section and one face-to-face section of the course, but she thought if an adjunct was teaching the course she'd just make both sections face-to-face. I would like to teach some online courses in the future if possible, and actually I had taught that math course as an online course before, but I am happy to teach both sections face-to-face. I'm just happy to have a job! I'm still hoping and praying that I can become permanent again in August 2019. Time will tell.

I took a video today of Oliver reading some words. He is making progress even if his kindergarten experience is FAR more relaxed than his siblings was for three reasons #1 his immaturity, #2 I've taken on a FT job, and #3 now I have three students at home. Maurice would be pleased that "fox" is one of his favorite words to read. Thus far we have worked on three letter short vowel words, and more recently we've also been working on words with "sh," "ch," and "th".